


The Road Not Taken

by Maror (Zivit)



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dialogue Heavy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 00:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13423062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zivit/pseuds/Maror
Summary: An exercise in the flip side of happily ever after. Originally posted January 2007.





	The Road Not Taken

"I don't have any flowers today. The thought that something beautiful has to die for someone who's dead to know you're thinking about them- when dead people obviously can't know that because they're _dead_ \- is... it's stupid. And they don't let you have live plants here, so I brought something else. I did a little research, and I know it's not your religion, but-"

"Bren?"

She started, and turned. "Angela? What are you doing here?"

Angela smiled. "Same thing you are, I guess." She laughed. "I never thought I'd see you voluntarily talking to a stone."

"I know. But it's.. " She shrugged and gestured toward the stone in question.

Her friend nodded. "It's Booth. How can you not?"

"Exactly."

They stood in comfortable silence for several minutes, each with her own thoughts. Temperance turned a pebble over and over in her withered hand. Angela spoke first.

"He loved you."

Brennan's lips twitched. "More than the Steelers."

"What?"

"That's what he said, the first time he told me. Then he explained it, and laughed and laughed because he couldn't believe he'd said something so stupid."

"But he meant it."

"I know." She looked across the field to where six uniformed figures processed with a flag-draped casket. She was almost startled when Angela spoke again.

"You never told me."

"Hmm?"

"That you knew."

"We were never as oblivious as you all thought we were."

"Did you ever tell him?"

"Once."

Angela huffed. "For God's sake, Brennan. You had the man by the balls for thirty years, and you didn't _do_ anything about it?"

Brennan shrugged. "It was a mutual decision. We knew that it would be good. Better than good. But we also knew that when it went bad, it would go very bad. Because that's the way we are. Were. So we didn't. There was just too much at stake. Better to stay static than risk everything."

"So that was it? You just decided?"

"More or less. That we wouldn't let it interfere with our friendship. That we could behave like rational adults. That we wouldn't get jealous if the other found someone to spend their life with."

"You never did find someone else, though."

"No," she murmured. "We never did."

After a moment, she placed the pebble by the grave, and left Angela to her own remembrances.

**Author's Note:**

> Leaving stones at a grave is a Jewish tradition, a way of showing the grave was visited as well as being representative of the permanence of the deceased's presence in the memories of the living.


End file.
